Wow that was amazing. Oda is the master of the slow build. I'm not going to say that this development is a shock to me as I have been expecting Sabo to be the one to "inherit Ace's will" since Whitebeard's speech about how the will of D has been passed on through the generations. At least at one point I was expecting him to get the Falme-Flame fruit after we saw it as the prize, but I was expecting him to steal it when I was considering that possibility. Having him become Lucy was a great decision. I now look forward to him winning the tournament and proudly proclaiming as he is about to eat the fruit that he is Sabo D. Portgas, announcing that he has inherited Ace's will.

Sadly I don't really expect anyone to read that since very few people here keep up with the manga as far as I can tell.

I also like what it signifies

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The revolutionaries have joined the fray. It has turned into a four way battle with the straw hats at the centre of it. Wonder if Robin knew that Sabo and Luffy know each other.

Also, looks like Caribou's story has finally concluded. I actually really enjoyed it. Probably my favourite cover story so far.

The revolutionaries have joined the fray. It has turned into a four way battle with the straw hats at the centre of it. Wonder if Robin knew that Sabo and Luffy know each other.

Also, looks like Caribou's story has finally concluded. I actually really enjoyed it. Probably my favourite cover story so far.

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I love four way battles in fiction. However it seems that the various factions have one of two goals at the moment, and I don't see much reason for any of them to change positions. At least not until the toys revert, at which point there is no telling what the Marines will do. On one hand this should be enough to strip Donflamingo of his title. On the other he is a Celestial Dragon....or at least was, so I'm not sure what if anything they can really do to him. No idea on whether Robin knew about Sabo knowing Luffy. My instinct is that she probably had some inclination about it (as I cannot imagine Sabo not talking with Robin aka one of his brother's friends at some point), but she probably is unaware of the exact nature of their relationship.

On a different note, I noticed that the character introduced at the end was the Assistant Master of Fishman Karate for the Revolutionaries. I remember that there was a Fishman Karate user in the tournament who secretly spoke to someone via Den Den Mushi in the pit. Connected? Probably.

I'd never have seen THAT coming o_O !!!Worst is, it makes complete sense.

If you are talking about the reveal that I think you are talking about, I thought it was pretty obvious something like two chapters ago. Basically whatever chapter it was that the person in the past put on the choker. Then again I had seen speculation a long time ago regarding that choker, so it might have just been red flagged in my brain.

The girl with the revolutionaries and who is the assistant master of Fishman karate is Koala aka the girl returned to her village by Fisher Tiger right before his death. I just skipped over her name during my first few read throughs until a podcast I listen to pointed it out. That is an amazing detail that makes so much sense, as she has very good reasons to both be in the revolutionaries and to learn a form of combat that is uncommon for humans. I love it and look forward to seeing where things go from here with her. incidentally, we now have four+ characters/groups of characters that we need Flashbacks from. Traffy, Donflamingo(possibly combined with Traffy), Sabo, Koala, and Toy Soldier pre-being turned into a toy.

AOTS:Outbreak CompanyMost imaginative story of the season by far. I spent the season afraid that the show would lose its edge, only to be surprised week after week.

Runner-up:Strike the BloodWhile it doesn't revolutionize anything, every element of this show is above average. It demonstrates that with enough polish, you can create a diamond.

Biggest Surprise:Walkure RomanzeConsidering that the source material is an eroge, everyone thought this would be a T&A anime a la Queen's Blade. It turned out to be a really good anime with less ecchi than most of the other shows.

Biggest Disappointment:Kill La KillBarebone story, so-so animation, unlikable lead character and just overall boring. The only thing the show ever had going for itself is the TTGL name.

Coppelion - I set the bar low, thinking it'd be at least some fun nonsense, and it still fell flat on its face...

Second biggest disappointment:

The fact that I couldn't get myself to watch anything else. I honestly hate keeping up with new season stuff, almost as much as I hate keeping up with new games, yet every season I keep trying...and failing...

Biggest Disappointment:Kill La KillBarebone story, so-so animation, unlikable lead character and just overall boring. The only thing the show ever had going for itself is the TTGL name.

I won't defend the fact that it was probably one of the most disappointing anime of the season since, while it is good, it is not as great as the names attached suggested and the hype built up for it didn't help either (as there was a ton of that). But barebones story? Whatcha' talkin' about!? The show's got like five different factions running around/competing with each other at this point (assuming the blonde-haired girl recently introduced is on her own side, since she seems more of the assassin-for-hire archetype rather than a high-level minion type like the big guy from Nudist Beach is) and a sixth side is on the way once this field trip to the western front (for fun and conquest) kicks off. As for the so-so animation, I'd say its about on par with TTGL. Especially the fight scenes as they're kinda chaotic, not particularly detailed, and very much over the top. And the lead character is your typical martial arts movie protagonist in every way (outside of donning Magical Girl Power Armor, wielding a sword, and being the son daughter of not-Shin Mazinger Z-hen's Professor Kabuto (another anime I've got to get around to watching one of these days)).

Shin Mazinger Z's pacing is all over the place, just to warn ya. You might still enjoy it, but after a while I couldn't look past the fact that it was drawing out parts that it didn't need to while rushing parts that I felt needed more attention.

This was a weird anime season for me. Most of the stuff I thought I would like I really didn't, yet I did discover a few titles I enjoyed that were completely unexpected to me. I wouldn't exactly call them gems, though, since they were mostly just fun in a cheesy/campy sort of way. There was nothing the entire season I would really call outstanding or particularly noteworthy. And the number of shows I watched halfway and ended up dropping was probably the largest of any season in memory. I mean, every season I'll watch an episode or two of several shows and decide 'nope' but I wouldn't call that 'dropping' so much as not picking up in the first place. But this season I was dropping shows left and right. There were a lot of disappointments.

Shows I ended up mostly enjoying:Outbreak Company - There is some really interesting stuff in this show. There's also some blatant wish fulfillment pandering to a degree that almost makes you think it's parodying itself. It really has a split personality and I'm still not entirely sure how much of that was intentional. But it was definitely one of the most memorable titles this season.

Log Horizon - Even though they never actually bother to explain or justify the setting this show does some pretty cool stuff with it. Basically it addresses the question of what would happen if a game world became real...which really does sound like more wish fulfillment but the emphasis on politics and human relationships in the new world is genuinely interesting.

Arpeggio of Blue Steel - I'm still not entirely sure if the only reason I'm watching this is because of the obvious parallels to KanColle. It's not really a 'good' show. But it's a fun show. The whole 3D animation that's been cell shaded and carefully constructed to look 2D thing is kind of cool too.

Strike the Blood - Much like Arpeggio I can't really claim this show is good. It's just clean, oldschool, campy fun. But even then I think it sort of fell apart in the second half. The last story arc in particular I found to be pretty blah. They're shoving too many characters in with too little time to develop them. That might partially be the fault of the anime adaption just trying to cover too much in the time they had. But the first half was pretty solid.

Barely watched any new anime this year, so I will be doing my list for manga instead of anime.

Manga of the Year: One Piece! Totally should not be a surprise. It has been amping things up all year and we are now on the eve of a freaking epic war.Even going into the new year it is still going on all cylinders. All hail the king of manga, Oda! He is truly Odaweomse!

Runner-Up: Magi. Absolutely great manga(anime is less good). It has had a great year as well with one of the most epic finishes for a battle ever. I think the series is great and will continue to be great. So glad this is getting an official release(not t just wait for an official release of the Adventures of Sinbad).

(Honorable mentions, World Trigger for being the best new manga of the year, which is setting itself up to quite possibly being a long running series, and The World God Only Knows for having a great arc, even if it is below the top two)

Biggest Surprise: Bleach! I still hate Bleach. It is a waste of space and it has become a convoluted mess that I don't care about at all. So why is it my biggest surprise? Because of Mask de Masuline. He is an amazing character. I love him, and I didn't think I could ever care about anything going on in Bleach ever again. I know that he will die in one or two weeks since he is going to be fodder to show how Renji has improved.....but I don't care. Go Mask de Masculine, hear the cheers of your fans and WWWIIIIIINNNNN!!!!

Biggest Disappointment: Huh this is going to be hard. One hand there was Jasco which wasn't that good, but I wasn't expecting much from at any point. Then there is Naruto which has just completely fallen and is just uninteresting, but I think that it might have been that way at the beginning of the year and I really don't want to double check on where Naruto was at the beginning of the year by rereading any chapters. So I guess I'll go with Seraph of the End because I had no idea of what to expect going in, and I ended up with a crappy battle series that has a tsundere main character that I hate. The sooner this thing gets cancelled the better.

So Shonen Jump has announced the finalists for the Global Manga competition. You can check them out here. I really don't care for the reader they are using, but that might partially be because it is grabbing the data from Japan. Putting my thoughts on the series below in the spoiler box.

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So overall I thought they were overall kind of lame. Sweat Man was....how the hell is this a finalist? Golden Rabbit was alright I guess, not something I would really want to read regularly, but it is alright as a stand alone. Morning Star was my vote. I'm not going to say it was great, but I do want to see where it goes. The biggest flaw with it though seems to be the lack of backgrounds. Hell at one point I thought something lying on the ground was supposed to be jumping because I didn't realize it was supposed to be an aerial shot at first. I think it does have potential though. Boom was....weird. I didn't like it, but I suspect it will do well in the rankings due to fan service and just the general weirdness. The Team Before Daybreak was alright. It seemed way too abrupt, but for a one-shot it wasn't offensive. El Viento will probably win the thing. I didn't really care for it due to a combination of disliking the combination of swords and westerns and disliking the main character's "eagle eye" ability. However I suspect that it will get a good number of votes just from the thumbnail image from people who don't have time to read all six.

Found it weird that none of the finalists are from Japan.

Oh and hey look took less than a day for Bleach to start sucking again. Well played Kubo, well played. However I shall cheer for Mask de Masculine nonetheless!

Now onto One Piece 372-

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Chapter was alright, but I mostly want to discuss the chapter because we now have a rough idea of how Donflamingo's troops are positioned, so it is time to make predications about fight match ups! Obviously Franky is taking on Senor Pink in the battle of the perverts. Luffy is fighting Donflamingo. Giolla, Violet, Monet, and Vergo are all obviously out of the fight now (well I guess Giolla could come back in theory). I don't expect Baby 5 or Buffalo to get major fights since they were both taken out by Nami and Usop once. Sugar seems to be a Robin and Usop fight, but I'm betting one of the two of them will be turned into toys during the fight (thinking Usop). Dellinger seems like he should be a Sanji fight, but Sanji shouldn't be returning to the island.....oh I just had a nice idea for that fight. Okay I think I have a rough idea of how I want to distribute the fights now.

Donflamingo- Luffy

Trebol- Toy Soldier returned to human form (the undefeated champion of the Arena who I forgot the name of)Sugar- Robin and Usop (Usop turned into a toy midfight, Robin just barely being able to win by trusting in the toyified Usop)Violet- "Beaten" by Sanji alreadyGiolla- Taken out by Brooke already

Pica- Zoro (alternate Kinemon if the admiral gets a fight, as in that case I am putting Zoro against the admiral)Gladius- Kinemon (need an alternate here, but not really sure who would work)Buffalo- Fodder if he reappearsBaby 5- Fodder if she reappears

Vergo- Taken out by Law alreadyMonet- Taken out already and possibly dead